Trevor Noah has recently been appointed as the new host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. The Daily Show is a late night talk and news satire television program which airs Monday to Thursday and premiered in 1996. The…

The singer, Robin Thicke, has just lost a R90 million Rand court case for copying a Marvin Gaye song. A court has found that Robin Thicke and producer Pharell Williams infringed the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got To…

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) handed down an interesting decision recently in the case of South African Breweries Ltd v Brandhouse Beverages (Pty) Ltd. Interesting because it’s a rare example of the ASA acknowledging that colour can play a trade…

Red Bull has recently taken on another "bovine" in the form of an ox. A local brewery in Northern Virginia in the USA, the Old Ox Brewery, has received a letter of demand and is currently in litigation around the…

The SCA decision in the case of Nestlé v Iffco is a big one. Here are the most important findings: • Nestlé’s 3D registrations for the shape of the Kit Kat bar were valid. They did not contravene the provision…

On 1 December 2014 the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) handed down its judgement in the case of Yair Shimansky v Browns the Diamond Store. The issue was whether Shimansky – the owner of five jewellery stores and a registration…

The recent Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) decision in the case of Roodezandt Ko-operatiewe Wynmakery Ltd v Robertson Winery (Pty) Ltd and the Registrar of Trade Marks isn’t ground-breaking, but there’s some interesting stuff in there. A company had a…

South Africa had its first AdWords decision recently. In the case of Cochrane v M-Systems, the issue was this: is it lawful for M-Systems– which competes with fencing company Cochrane, the owner of the big-selling ClearVu brand – to acquire…

The long-running European trade mark saga of Specsavers v Asda is of some interest to us in South Africa. It’s not necessary to go into the whole story, but what’s important is that Specsavers had a Community Trade Mark (European…

Yes we may all use ‘google’ as a verb, and say that we’re going to ‘google’ something when we simply mean that we’re going to search for it using whatever search engine we happen to favour. Yet Google is, for…